chapter 13

socio-organizational
issues and stakeholder
requirements
socio-organizational issues and
stakeholder requirements
• Organizational issues affect acceptance
– conflict & power, who benefits, encouraging use
• Stakeholders
– identify their requirements in organizational context
• Socio-technical models
– human and technical requirements
• Soft systems methodology
– broader view of human and organizational issues
• Participatory design
– includes the user directly in the design process
• Ethnographic methods
– study users in context, unbiased perspective
Organisational issues
Organisational factors can make or break a system
Studying the work group is not sufficient
– any system is used within a wider context
– and the crucial people need not be direct users
Before installing a new system must understand:
– who benefits
– who puts in effort
– the balance of power in the organisation
… and how it will be affected
Even when a system is successful
… it may be difficult to measure that success
Conflict and power
?
CSCW = computer supported cooperative work
– people and groups have conflicting goals
– systems assuming cooperation will fail!

e.g. computerise stock control

stockman looses control of information
 subverts the system

identify stakeholders – not just the users

Organisational structures

• Groupware affects organisational structures

– communication structures reflect line management
– email – cross-organisational communication

Disenfranchises lower management

 disaffected staff and ‘sabotage’

Technology can be used to change management

style and power structures
– but need to know that is what we are doing
– and more often an accident !
Invisible workers
Telecommunications improvements allow:
– neighbourhood workcentres
– home-based tele-working

Many ecological and economic benefits

– reduce car travel
– flexible family commitments
but:
– ‘management by presence’ doesn't work
– presence increases perceived worth
– problems for promotion

Barriers to tele-working are managerial/social

not technological
Benefits for all?

Disproportionate effort
who puts in the effort ≠ who gets the benefit
Example: shared diary:
– effort: secretaries and subordinates, enter data
– benefit: manager easy to arrange meetings
– result: falls into disuse
Solutions:
– coerce use !
– design in symmetry
Free rider problem

no bias, but still problem

possible to get benefit without doing work

if everyone does it, system falls into disuse

e.g. electronic conferences

– possible to read but never contribute

solutions:
strict protocols (e.g., round robin)
increase visibility – rely on social pressure
Critical mass

Early telephone system:

few subscribers – no one to ring
lots of subscribers – never stops ringing!

Electronic communications similar:

benefit  number of subscribers
early users have negative cost/benefit
need critical mass to give net benefits

How to get started?

– look for cliques to form core user base
– design to benefit an initial small user base
 Critical mass
strong benefit when
lots of users

.. but little benefit

for early users

solution – increase
zero point benefit
Evaluating the benefits

Assuming we have avoided the pitfalls!

How do we measure our success?
job satisfaction and information flow
– hard to measure
economic benefit
– diffuse throughout organisation
But ..
costs of hardware and software
… only too obvious

Perhaps we have to rely on hype!

capturing requirements

• need to identify requirements within context of

use
• need to take account of
– stakeholders
– work groups and practices
– organisational context
• many approaches including
– socio-technical modelling
– soft system modelling
– participatory design
– contextual inquiry
who are the stakeholders?

• system will have many stakeholders with

potentially conflicting interests
• stakeholder is anyone effected by success
or failure of system
– primary - actually use system
– secondary - receive output or provide input
– tertiary - no direct involvement but effected by
success or failure
– facilitating - involved in development or
deployment of system
who are the stakeholders?
Example: Classifying stakeholders – an airline booking
system
An international airline is considering introducing a new
booking system for use by associated travel agents to sell flights
directly to the public.
Primary stakeholders: travel agency staff, airline booking staff
Secondary stakeholders: customers, airline management
Tertiary stakeholders: competitors, civil aviation authorities,
customers’ travelling companions, airline shareholders
Facilitating stakeholders: design team, IT department staff
who are the stakeholders?

• designers need to meet as many

stakeholder needs as possible
– usually in conflict so have to prioritise
– often priority decreases as move down
categories e.g. primary most important
– not always e.g. life support machine
socio-technical modelling

• response to technological determinism

• concerned with technical, social, organizational
and human aspects of design
• describes impact of specific technology on
organization
• information gathering: interviews, observation,
focus groups, document analysis
• several approaches e.g.
– CUSTOM
– OSTA
CUSTOM
• Six stage process - focus on stakeholders
– describe organizational context, including primary goals,
physical characteristics, political and economic background
– identify and describe stakeholders including personal issues,
role in the organization and job
– identify and describe work-groups whether formally constituted
or not
– identify and describe task–object pairs i.e. tasks to be
performed and objects used
– identify stakeholder needs: stages 2–4 described in terms of
both current and proposed system - stakeholder needs are
identified from the differences between the two
– consolidate and check stakeholder requirements against earlier
criteria
OSTA
• Eight stage model - focus on task
– primary task identified in terms of users’ goals
– task inputs to system identified
– external environment into which the system will be introduced is
described, including physical, economic and political aspects
– transformation processes within the system are described in
terms of actions performed on or with objects
– social system is analyzed, considering existing internal and
external work-groups and relationships
– technical system is described in terms of configuration and
integration with other systems
– performance satisfaction criteria are established, indicating social
and technical requirements of system
– new technical system is specified
soft systems methodology
• no assumption of technological solution - emphasis on
understanding situation fully
• developed by Checkland
• seven stages
– recognition of problem and initiation of analysis
– detailed description of problem situation
• rich picture
– generate root definitions of system
• CATWOE
– conceptual model - identifying transformations
– compare real world to conceptual model
– identify necessary changes
– determine actions to effect changes
CATWOE

• Clients: those who receive output or benefit from the system

• Actors: those who perform activities within the system
• Transformations: the changes that are affected by the system
• Weltanschauung: (from the German) or World View - how the
system is perceived in a particular root definition
• Owner: those to whom the system belongs, to whom it is
answerable and who can authorize changes to it
• Environment: the world in which the system operates and by
which it is influenced
Participatory design

In participatory design:
workers enter into design context

In ethnography (as used for design):

designer enters into work context

Both make workers feel valued in design

… encourage workers to ‘own’ the products

Participatory Design
• User is an active member of the design team.

• Characteristics
– context and work oriented rather than system oriented
– collaborative
– iterative
• Methods
– brain-storming
– storyboarding
– workshops
– pencil and paper exercises
ETHICS

• participatory socio-technical approach devised

by Mumford
– system development is about managing change
– non-participants more likely to be dissatisfied
• three levels of participation
– consultative, representative, consensus
• design groups including stakeholder
representatives make design decisions
• job satisfaction is key to solution
Ethnography

very influential in CSCW

a form of anthropological study with special

focus on social relationships

does not enter actively into situation

seeks to understand social culture

unbiased and open ended

contextual inquiry
• Approach developed by Holtzblatt
– in ethnographic tradition but acknowledges and challenges
investigator focus
– model of investigator being apprenticed to user to learn
about work
– investigation takes place in workplace - detailed interviews,
observation, analysis of communications, physical workplace,
artefacts
– number of models created:
• sequence, physical, flow, cultural, artefact
• models consolidated across users
– output indicates task sequences, artefacts and
communication channels needed and physical and cultural
constraints